Torture: thinking of the unthinkable

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In Breach of Trust: Truth Morality and Politics
(Quarterly Essay 16), I lamented that the "war on terror" has
forced us to debate whether torture is sometimes justified. I
expressed pessimism about the outcome. When, in the face of a
massive terrorist attack, we soberly contemplate the cost of
adhering to international law on the prohibition of torture then, I
fear, we may realise that in our hearts we did not believe that
prohibition should be without exception.

My pessimism is not based on a gloomy view of human nature. It
is based on my belief that forces towards intellectual and moral
simplification in our culture have estranged us from resources we
need to make clear, even to ourselves, why torture is morally
horrific in all circumstances and why it ought never to be done.
Consequentialism - the philosophy that teaches that only
consequences matter morally, especially in politics - is one of
those forces. Deakin University's Professor Mirko Bagaric (The
Age 18/5) is in the grip of a simplistic form of it.

My pessimism had not prepared me for praise of torture as "an
excellent information gathering device" - praise that showed not
even a trace of anxiety that it expresses a corrupted sensibility.
No moral panic for Professor Bagaric. To the contrary, he shows
arrogant contempt for the moral traditions that have informed
international law. I was heartened by the incredulous anger that
his article provoked, but I still fear that we are sleepwalking
towards the belief that sometimes we will be morally obliged to
torture people for the greater good.

In respect of the crudity of his argument, Professor Bagaric
impresses me as a self-made man. But the essence of his position is
espoused, usually less offensively and more elegantly, by many
philosophers. Many more of them believe there is a case for it and
(rightly) believe that they are duty bound to put that case justly
to their students. Because of its attractions, many of their
students are persuaded. Now some of them will note that when a
university teacher, rising to the virtually ubiquitous call to be a
public intellectual, professes publicly a consequentialist
justification of torture, some of his colleagues accuse him of
bringing shame to his university and to his profession. Some urge
him to resign or demand his dismissal.

Deakin vice-chancellor Sally Walker was right to resist any
suggestion that Bagaric be dismissed or forced to recant. She did
not, however, seem fully to understand the significance of the
situation. Those who believe he proposed something evil and that
its acceptance would corrupt the culture are surely not obviously
mistaken. Should they restrict their criticism to the professor's
logic and to his assumptions about the facts if they are to avoid
the charge that they are inquisitors?

But why should the professor's failure of logic or errors of
fact strike them as more important than his morally repugnant
conclusions? Surely no one believes he came to those conclusions by
a purely intellectual route. Moral, political and legal philosophy
can be morally dangerous disciplines. Sometimes they put us morally
to the question and force us to think more seriously than we often
do about the nature of the liberal academy.

The second reason for my pessimism is that consequentialists
oppose the exceptionless prohibition on torture. There are good (I
don't say decisive) consequentialist reasons for not doing so. But
they are not, it is important to note, the reasons that inform the
kind of outrage Bagaric's article provoked. Nor are the ones that
have been advanced in the public debate about torture
convincing.

Why would someone who believes that in politics only
consequences matter morally be much troubled by the fact that
sometimes torture produces false, misleading and time-wasting
information, and that sometimes innocent people will be tortured.
Political pundits say commonsense persuades ordinary Australians
that sometimes we must inflict a horrible death on thousands of
innocent civilians to secure American protection in as yet
unforeseen circumstances. Why, they will ask, is acceptance of
torture in limited circumstance so different? The answer can only
lie, I believe, in the moral reasons that inform the outrage
expressed against Bagaric and which have, even if indirectly,
informed international law on this.

Historians may come to see the Western debate over torture as
the point when we were called to sobriety about our deepest moral
and political beliefs because we were forced to ask, "What can we
decently do to protect ourselves?"

I believe that we do not face a more serious political and
cultural question. If we avoid it, the cost to our self-respect
will be enormous. I hope, most passionately, that we can find in
our public, political culture the resources to enable us to
articulate lucidly the reasons for believing that torture is always
a terrible evil, morally horrible through and through. I hope that
we will also conclude that we should never regard it as a lesser
evil that we must sometimes choose if we are to be politically and
morally responsible.

Raimond Gaita is professor of moral philosophy at
University of London, King's College and professor of philosophy at
Australian Catholic University.